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I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again

I don’t want to dwell on this but felt it required a response – because it is about someone I respect and because it provides a harsh light on an aspect of the debate.

I read with a shudder Tom Brown’s article in his old paper, the Record today in which he opens up about his views of the debate and in so doing, illuminates something Yes has never got to terms with – a widespread and deep-rooted contempt for the concept of our national independence.

It is a powerful belief that defies all logic to any other nation…the idea that Scotland isn’t really a nation as others, that to aspire to be like the others is some kind of betrayal of Britain and is an insult to all Scots. It is an overwhelming emotion that Scottish nationalism on the one hand and desire for independence as a means to social reform on the other are pitiable, small-minded trifles beneath consideration by intelligent voters.

Rules that are never applied to any other country be it New Zealand or Canada, strife-torn Ukraine, tiny Malta or the wasteland of Gaza are nevertheless forced on Scotland to show that self determination, far from invoking pride and self-esteem, is divisive and dangerous, breaks up families and leads to bitterness.

It is almost as if just by having an open debate and a democratic vote, we have spat on the flag.

Tom runs over the practical problems he thinks will accrue from a Yes vote but never once talks of Scotland with pride as his country, doesn’t find a scintilla of hope in the ambition to be independent and expresses nothing positive of what a Scotland run by Scots for Scots might achieve.

Simultaneously, he turns a blind eye to the horrors of Union being visited on our population today. A Labour man who spent his life with a Labour paper finds no words in his analysis of the rapid growth of measurable poverty, of welfare sanctions, of foodbanks, of income cuts for the disabled, the harsh treatment of young war veterans, the fall in pensions fashioned by his hero Gordon Brown, the spiralling national debt, Labour’s adherence to Tory spending plans and no revulsion at his side working hand-in-glove with the people implementing those measures.

Instead he deprecates the debate itself, as if just talking about it is anti-democratic and goes on to say it is the nastiest he has encountered in all his years. It is certainly true that there is venom if you look for it but most of the sparks are caused by the passion the independence debate generates.

Why so fearful? Does he not remember the poll tax riots, the furious debate by Labour in Govan Town Hall with Tommy Sheridan in full cry and walk-outs? Did he miss the punch-ups and scuffling at poll tax events between protestors and police? Was he elsewhere when the Labour victors at the Glasgow Central by-election walked out through a phalanx of hissing spitting Nationalists? Where was he when the Monklands by election exploded in 1994…in the words of the Herald: ‘The bitter Monklands East by-election campaign dragged up allegations of nepotism, sectarianism, corruption, and a biased spend between Airdrie and Coatbridge’? The local Labour council leader refused to endorse the Labour candidate.

I and many like me are proud of this debate – the longest in our history and one which has galvanised a whole new constituency of voters to engage with the process and to bring new voices to the discussion and new ideas and left Tom’s conventional media behind. Only the willfully deaf could fail to hear the voices of respectable Scotland in this debate and register only the drivel we post on Twitter.

It is the people who can’t grasp what is going on and don’t want Scotland to change who are bored with the campaign and if Tom Brown is still saying there isn’t enough information out there, his bow tie must be emitting a force field to block data. The ‘not-enough-info’ line is the issue-dodger’s excuse. It really means ‘don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up.’

He quotes Brown: ‘This a debate and a decision that affects children whom I love and people whom I respect’. Exactly. This is for our children so that 180,000 of them don’t have to live in poverty, suffer ill-health and diminished life chances, in homes free from alcohol abuse and with the chance to transform social mobility and our economy through fee-free education.

And how more respectful could you be than to treat your friends and neighbours as equals and work in partnership with them – the normal relations between friendly independent states?

We look at this through different ends of a telescope. I see a clear future up close and imminent and they see a distant, ill-defined horizon, too far and too difficult to achieve.

It made me recoil in horror at the picture he contrives at the very suggestion of our own little Scotland running its own affairs but it shows you clearly how others don’t have ambition for Scotland, don’t care enough to grant it independence, don’t believe we could manage and have tied themselves emotionally to the UK. This is a Britnat declaration – the UK is their country and Scotland comes a long way second. Tom’s article drips with implied contempt and reveals how it isn’t just Tories who have disdain for the Scots but it is very much alive in Labour circles too, demonstrating that the party prefers right wing Tories – quite likely working with UKIP in less than a year’s time – decimating our country, than Scottish-elected governments delivering social justice.

The opening polemic – re-hashed drivel already debunked almost on a perpetual loop – is vomit inducing in the sense he seems to be willfully manufacturing/provoking bloody discord as per his “Big State” as good take when dissident entities seek to “secede” {not return their popular sovereign powers and abjure from an international treaty violated from the get go. And do so. to boot, democratically, peacefully, and legally as per The Edinburgh Agreement signed on the dotted lines by the respective Scots and UK govts)..

An attempt by him to provoke a Balkans style conflagration? Or a Mau Mau re-run?

A friend of yours he may be, but his parochial vitriol provokes nothing but contempt and disdain in my Japanese wife as she knows and reviles the self-same element in Japan who crave a return to a similar style Japanese dominated status quo in Asia to mimic the British and American imperial elites in their respective spheres of influence {the UK at the but burning out bit of the fag end of its imperial life-span).

He might also want to interview my pukka Anglo-Dutch and old Kentish squire-archy sisters-in-law (plus assorted family in the USA. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Czech Republic} before he pens his inevitable series of sequels.

Tom Brown’s family seems to be a great mix of different nationalities. I’m not sure why he then sees red when the idea of Scottish nationality is brought into the equation. Very saddening, in fact sickening article.

It’s this idea that there is something terrible about your relatives being of different nationalities. My eldest sister was born in England, the rest of us in Scotland. All except me live in New Zealand. All our kids were born in NZ. That’s three nationalities right there.

Our mother was born in Romania before WWII and had a Romanian nanny. But because her parents were English (her father was an oil engineer with Shell) she is English. Her twin brother enquired of the Romanian govt in Cold War times if he was entitled to a passport but was rebuffed.

One of my offspring lives here in Scotland and identifies as a European, the other is back in New Zealand and identifies strongly as a New Zealander despite having left aged 4.

NZ has a much more mature attitude to such matters through our intertwined relationship with various Pacific Island nations, something wilfully misunderstood by the British media in terms of Polynesians in the All Blacks. Though they have gone quiet of late with the likes of Manu Tuilagi playing for England.

How is it possible to hold and control so many contradictory points of view in ones head? He is able to acknowledge his grand children’s multi national lives but cannot make the distinction between Scottish and British, cannot extend the thought to include the idea that the British State, not country, consists of four different Nationalities.
His last paragraph seems to describe himself more than the debate itself, his diatribe neatly displaying his own petty small nation inward looking confusion.
He is a dinosaur, looking backwards over the ground already covered and not seeing the asteroid crashing to earth behind him.
Thank goodness he has not been involved in covering the whole of the debate if this late contribution is the best he has to offer. Imagine working for all that time in The Press, covering all those stories and somehow not noticing the destitution, asset stripping and impoverishment of his own communities in the certain knowledge that the Establishment knows best.
Fore lock tugging in print and for what purpose, so that he will not have to think about the difficulties experienced by thousands of Scottish residents due to the imposition of alien policies by Westminster parties over the last 35 years!
Another better to be here and poor than try and improve things by ourselves supporter. How did these people pull the wool over us for so many years.

By controlling the information we used to decide how to vote. Then the internet came and blogs developed and some of those decided to hold the media to account and to report stories fully and properly etc. etc. Now inconvenient facts that politicians do deals with the press to ignore get an airing, political spin is deconstructed and ‘FactChecking’ is now de rigeur for political claims.

Then there were the various scandals at Westminster over allowances and cash for influence or honours etc. etc. which increased public cynicism and scepticism which means politicians are not trusted the way they used to be and so political waverers and undecideds have increased, fewer people are either members of political parties or tribally loyal to them than in the past. Some journalists, particularly of the older generation, Derek excepted, have not adapted to the new reality very well.

Some have adapted very well vis those at Newsnet, or Bella or the arch fact checker Stu Campbell over at Wings. Exemplars of what can be done which shame many in the MSM.

This’ll be the same “Wiiiiings” that thought that a normal member of the public, plucked from obscurity to be some sort of spokesperson for “Scottish” Labour was related to the former provest of Glasgow… factchecker indeed.

I couldn’t bear reading to the end of this Tom Brown’s hateful and inciteful drivel. Those who say they support the union are amidst a bunch of no hopers who denigrate the abilities and aspirations of their own people and insult at every opportunity. Who abuses their family/friends/neighbours in this way, foreign or not?

Hear Hear – I remember the winter of discontent, the miner’s strike and the poll-tax. This is a well moderated Anglican tea-party by comparison. In case you forget – people died – but not in this political debate.

it’s quite simply a form of denial that applies to all Scottish Labour people. They trust London to run Scotland but not Edinburgh and can’t see the shame in that analysis. Scotland is a region to them. It becomes a nation when Strachan puts out 11 men for 90 minutes. But their nation is a pantomime parody of a real nation.

I cannot bring myself to read the article, Derek’s précis is as far as my temper will allow. Anyway I can imagine the tone and nature very well. It will be similar to other Brit Nat rants with which we are all too familiar.

Brown and SLAB have taken a collective punt on the Union State and nailed their colours to the Brit Nat mast. It is a dangerous bet. Should there be a NO vote the squeals of delight from Downing Street and SLAB H.Q. in Glasgow will be ecstatic. Salmond destroyed, the YES movement wrecked, the SNP put in their place. When the champagne party in both places is over, in both locations, the assumption will be of “normal” politics ( pre 2007) reasserting itself. Unionism will feel a renewed self confidence and vigour. The beast of nationalism slain, the confidence of the SNP shattered. To Brown and Crichton at the Record this will be the apex of their lives.

But wait, having told Scots they were better together, will they be?

The truth is it is irrelevant when Milliband or Cameron win in 2015, the crushing arithmetic of economic decline will continue. But surely Britain has a “booming economy” with growth rates at 3%. These figures are only real if you believe inflation is 1.7% and we all know it is not. Cameron has said he has reduced the debt. He has, a bit like a smoker who was on 60 a day who is now on 40. The debt is still there costing Westminster, £50,000,000,000 a year interest and getting bigger. Britain is a relatively poor country with massive debts, a shrunken manufacturing base and a chronically unbalanced economy. The consequences of this decline will be the legacy of a NO vote and one which those who told us, like Brown and the SLAB establishment, that we were better together will have to answer for when the economic crunch comes. The interest rate rise next year may be the trigger for the housing bust we all know is coming. And wealthy NO voting pensioners with a private pension are in for a shock when the State OAP begins to be means tested.

Suddenly the euphoria of that champagne party in September 2014 will seem along way away as an enraged Scottish electorate will draw their own conclusions about the Unionist parties and their journalistic chums who had conspired to mislead and lie to them about a glorious British future.

The problem these Labour Britnats have is that they assume that people who vote for them in elections identify themselves in the same way.
The last census taken in Scotland with reference to identity put people like this very much in the minority.
Most Scots view themselves as either Scottish only or Scottish first and British second and as the referendum debate has gone on,I believe that more voters will identify with being Scottish and living in a country called Scotland.
This is especially true for younger voters who are used to having a semblance of democratic governance in Scotland and Westminster being far away and irrelevant to their lives.

I would have to agree with your other commentators, this is the last cry of a dying Political Party. They recognise they are in the wrong but are unable to rectify it without admitting it and that is unlikely to happen. They are blinded by their hatred of the SNP and they see their support vanishing.
I hope that they can live with the decision, which ever way it goes come 19th September. They will get the blame if things go badly in the future it there is a NO vote and I doubt they well be able to stomach a YES vote such is their bitterness.

Well said Derek, it would be some what dull if we didn’t have our daily doze of fear, hate and lies from the union.
I returned from a short break in England last week. All my English friends were keen to know how the referendum debate was progressing. Surprise to me was that they thought we should go for independence with one provisor, ‘ don’t copy in any way Westminster as your parliament.’
They thought the fear mongering from London has tarnished England’s reputation in the World.

I like the way he uses the label “kneejerk nationalists” and then starts the next sentence “As the …, *name-calling* campaign has dragged on …”.

I support Scotland being a country running it’s own affairs. I want it to flourish in the “grown up modern multi-cultural world”. You can only do that if you have a voice and the opportunity to use that voice alongside other independent nations.

Had a look at the column but had to stop reading. I never buy these “newspapers”, and I’ve never heard of Tom Brown before, But as the comments above confirm, he appears to be totally confused and two-faced, The bit about his multi-national family illustrates the point that he fails to see Scotland as a nation just like all the others he cites. How does the YES camp come to terms with that? I think by carrying on putting forward the positive case and providing the information that people need. There’s no excuse for not being able to find it. It’s wilfull ignorance on his part which, for a journalist, is quite damning. And at the end of the day, he can vote no if he wants to. I’m voting YES.

In another contradiction he blames Nationalists for a trivial debate but his main complaint seems to be about the output of BBC Scotland:

“BBC Scotland has hit a new low and become Banal Broadcasting for Cretins.”

This is the policy of the BBC, a very British institution, which has eviscerated it’s news and current affairs broadcasting in Scotland at one of the most politically momentous periods in history. It is a quintessential example of the way in which Scotland is belittled and downgraded by the union. Obviously Brown can’t see that.

Read this earlier, huge cringe from him, embarrassing really,good breakdown as usual Derek. Got my hair cut at lunchtime, Turkish barber ( always does a good job and sets fire to your ear hair, kinda weird ) Polish barber working in shop, Nigerian guy getting his hair cut, English guy waiting and me ( an Aberdonian ) I like the multiculturalism we live in, we were all joining in the discussion about the referendum, interesting times…………….

You are absolutely right Derek. The widespread contempt for the concept of Scottish independence is-widespread among the ‘We’re fine the way we are’ campaign! They’re the folk who have ideas and beliefs such as, ‘we can’t go it alone,’ or, ‘we’re fine the way we are,’ both powerful arguments, (only joking) indicate the psychology of the folk who think these things. It’s the Stockholm Syndrome! They’re suffering from the ‘Isolation from perspectives other than those of the captor’ category, and yes, suffering from ‘fear of the unknown’ is part of it. Being blinded to the reality of life in the Union follows on.
As for the repeated nonsense about not having enough information, you have to be able to ask relevant questions before you can find information, i e you have to know what you want to find out about! Things like Borders and international boundaries, the Barnett formula, treaties, etc, etc. It’s all on the internet, so click the mouse all of you who think there’s no information!

“something Yes has never got to terms with – a widespread and deep-rooted contempt for the concept of our national independence”

I’ve noticed this often – well, it’s hard not to notice it. There is a group of people who react to the suggestion of independence as if you had proposed that their cat should run the NASA space agency: the idea is met first with astonishment, then laughter and scorn. Intriguingly, these people view themselves as sophisticated.

I think it’s a colonised mindset. To these Scots our rulers are viewed as distinctly our betters – only a fool would deny it – but they want to demonstrate that they personally are above the vulgar herd. They are Adapted Scots, beings who have been able to absorb the virtues of the colonial ruler until they are no longer guilty of the coarse vices and barbaric habits of their neighbours (most especially their speech). That they should live in a country but have no desire to govern it they consider a subtlety of understanding denied to the rest of us.

I recall a couple of decades ago Robert Mugabe was asked if he thought Scotland would become independent. He said he thought not, as the people had not suffered enough. So it’s not surprising that most of these people are middle-class and well-to-do, although they are found in all classes.

I can understand (if not forgive) the Unionism of those who clearly have a great deal to lose – the peers of the realm, the career politicians, their cronies and contacts. I can understand, and forgive, those No voters who simply don’t grasp the issues. I even don’t mind people who just can’t be arsed with the whole thing. But this group of sophisticates who think they’re being really cool and smart – they annoy me. It’s a political Dunnning-Kruger Effect.

Just one point I disagree on v, and that is the assumption that the middle-class, and the well-to-do, are more likely to vote No. I work in an area which is mainly working class, and we have found, in the main, the opposite to be true. We are, slowly but surely getting there, but getting the people who have most to gain from an independent Scotland, the sick, the poor, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, these are the people who seem the most demoralised after being brainwashed for years by Westminster, and that is what is proving difficult. If they do bother about the news at all, it is of course the M.S.M, and we here all know what that means. So it’s a struggle at times, but the prize at the end of our task is so great we won’t be giving up.

If I may descend into personalisation. I have watched this debate from a great distance, namely Canberra, the isolated wind-cage of Australian politics. I despair of my father who in his 80’s visits local schools and recites Tam o’ Shanter and Violet’s ‘Wild Geese’ – who says it’s too late, and my brother in law who joined the Army and will salute any Union flag passing by.. I have written to the FM – there are a million Scots like me, who left to build other countries, because there was nothing in Scotland, who would be only too happy to return to family and friends, help build a new country with skills and expertise, we can do it.

I feel the Unionist element of the Labour Party is in shock to see the degree to which ordinary members of the public have felt empowered to express a whole variety of opinions about the referendum publicly not only in social media but in person, discussing it with friends, neighbours and anyone else who will listen., There is an overwhelming sense of expectation that those opinions should be taken seriously, regardless of the eventual outcome.

It means that the genie is out of the bottle and regardless of the result, the people of Scotland will be more inclined to look for governance by consent instead of meek acceptance of .directives from on high.

They have continually called for citizens to become more involved in politics, which to them meant just turning out and voting for them. Now their bluff has been called and they find it terrifying.

Absolutely many people in Scotland are much more politically aware and interested in the nuts and bolts of it all. The problem is with a no vote, and pray it is a yes, the establishment will punish the people of Scotland and try to suppress any further people power notions to say the least. It has to be a yes vote to regain any sense of democracy and to throw off the oppressive and destructive establishment that is westminster.

Ah yes, THAT Tom Brown: the “outspoken journalist”: full time apologist for “friend of the workers”, Gordon Brown, and, who deliberately said “hee-haw” at ANY of the massed-meetings held by the Scottish Daily Record workforce when “The Bouncing Czech”, aka deceased, pensions thief and former LABOUR MP, Robert Maxwell – was attempting to transform his Scottish titles into a satellite printing plant with a mere 8-12 “live pages” of Scottish news and sport; to make HIS “newspapers” seem more “Scottish” to the “great unwashed” of “North Britain”. And, de facto, that is what we have now – with both the “Scottish” SUN and the Daily Record. “Rupert” and “Robert” rule – ya bass?!
I, also, remember one Christmas when Tom “held court” in the “lounge” of Anderston Quay’s most famous watering-hole – “The Copy-Cat”. And, while his polka-dotted, bow-tie didn’t “whirl”, it did, indeed, “flash” intermittently; just like Tom; the Labour lick-spittle, who only “shines” when his “Labour” Master throws him a chew-stick!

Unlike Derek I never found any reason to respect Tom Brown, and unlike yourself I only knew him through his Record column in the 80s/90s. It was obvious to me he was nothing but a mouthpiece and manure-sprayer for his namesake Gordon – and I was in the Labour Party at the time.

I recall columns putting the boot in on striking miners, striking print workers, poll tax demonstrators and indeed one particular invective against the “gulls of Govan” (or similar) who were duped into electing Jim Sillars in 1988 or thereabouts. There were sharp criticisms of Tories and Thatcher, sure, but the real vitriol was always saved for those who defied the Labour orthodoxy, internal or external.

TB’s emergence from his sepulchre is, as others have noted, further evidence of our former PM and Iron Chancellor pulling levers at his old stomping grounds in the Record (and, I’d bet, at STV and BBC). The message, as ever, is Know Your Place.

To my eternal shame, I too was a member of the Labour Party – until, the “Dream-Team” leadership of “Kinnochio” and “Fattersley” ensured that “Cap’n Bob” got his thieving hands on the Mirror Group (pension fund!) and, as a “bonus”, awarded him the “services” of former Scottish Labour Party secretary, Helen Liddell (aka “Baroness Bucky of Fast”) as his full-time “toilet-attendant”. Many of us in the Record were then finished with these “Labour” traitors who, as you said Doc, had helped shaft the miners and virulently opposed the anti- Poll-Tax campaign. Meantime, Tom Brown faithfully followed “His Masters Voice” and no one ever saw or heard a cheap out of him any time we locked horns with the “Fat Man”. However, when “Mad Max” “took a dook” off a short plank into the Atlantic in 1991, only “scary” Ann Robinson and Tom Brown had a good word to say about this despicable scum-bag. Elsewhere, especially at Anderston Quay, there was singing and dancing in the streets – until the enormity of the pensions’ theft became apparent; then, even loyal Tom became concerned! And, unbelievably, the Labour Party still felt obliged to hold a minute’s silence for the biggest pensions’ thief ever – that is, until Gordon Brown turned up as chancellor! Still, it’s good to know that the Daily Record is STILL a Labour paper – despite sacking, sorry, “compulsorily selecting for redundancy” most of FOC/MOC’s (shop-stewards) before moving to their present plant at Cardonald in 1995. Aye, The Red Flag’s still flying there – my arse!

He is a drone drinking in the lies to comfort his fear! And using his grandchildren as an excuse! All my 4 kids and 2 grandchildren are st George cross English! At least they know that their father/grandfather is not a cheap sell out using pathetic excuses! They are proud that I stand by my values and the truth

Quite simply, I wonder how much the Retired ‘Legend’ was paid by the English Owned, Mirror Group Newspapers, to write this Article! An Honorable Retirement brought into Disrepute, and, from the Letters on the Record Site, invoking active disgust at this man, I don’t care how much he was Paid for this disgraceful Piece, it was not enough!!!

I read the TB article before I read this one and for a long time now, I have been aware of how much this ‘debate’ breaks down in a psychological way. In short BT are the angry, patronising parent or spoiled child whereas the Yes side seems to be the adult and hopeful child states. I am not a psychologist or even well educated so my terminology will be suspect but I hope people get the gist. TB’s article was from that grand old parent view which couldn’t possibly admit to any of the fine points made in the blog and the comments and won’t see these same points as it would undermine their world picture of many decades ago. My own father will be 80 next year and both my parents lived thro’ the 2nd world war and all the propaganda generated by the time and the events and was so ingrained that they think that anything better is a questionable goal. To quote my own father ‘ why do you want to be better than you are? Do you think you are better than
us ?’.
My response of having a desire to evolve to be the best that I can be and more, was treated with contempt and well..you can imagine. I gave up trying to convince certain people of the potential of an independent Scotland cos it’s just a waste of time and emotion. I left the ‘family home’ many decades ago and was eventually told not to come back and strangely enough, I have never felt the desire or the need to, as will the people of Scotland when we vote to ‘move out and onwards’

Aye.. K. D. Lang was Scottish.. and in common with every other lower Middle Class Scot of my era i was belted till I stopped using Dundonian Lallans and worked to my RP accent. When will we stop cringing?

“This is a Britnat declaration – the UK is their country and Scotland comes a long way second.”

The hard line British nationalism of many in Scotland has been a surprise for some in the Yes campaign. There is no dual Scottish/British identity there to work with.

If these British Scots think of Scotland as a nation at all it’s as an Indian Nation in the UK.

Indian Nations are those odd remnants of American Indian civilization which are embedded into the US. Distinct in some ways within the US but not internationally recognized anywhere.

The idea that those in the Labour party such as Alistair Darling or Gordon Brown prefer to be British and Tory than Scottish and anything is only strange if you don’t recognise that their identity and nationality isn’t defined by Scotland but by Britain – or to be honest, by England.

The UK is 84% English by population so it’s more English than Russia is Russian. Russians comprise only 81% of Russia.

Their nation is Britain and if Scotland becomes independent they’ll still think of Britain’s capital and parliament as their true capital and parliament even though by that time the rUK will be 92% English.

“Better Tory than independent”, is not a real Labour slogan but it’s accurate.

well after reading a few comments on here i guess the conclusion of the majority is we can put mr T Brown down as eh “undecided” for the moment, and with the needs a little more work to convince him to vote “YES” with a note to follow up

further to references to mr T Browns rant i have come across this ingrained almost brainwashed attitude it seems to manifest itself in older labour voters this brick wall that seems to exclude any real facts of how this scottish labour have been pissin on the scottish people for as long as i can remember the only thing i can link it to is our education system the willful withholding of knowledge or our past not the english version of our past our real past that existed before the union of the crowns then after the union of parliaments and the riots that occurred and marshall law being declared to quieten down the rioters ask yourself i am 62 its only recently i have through links on various sits Wings Bella etc have found out history didn’t start with this f/uk up union we were in fact a different country and this whole debate rather than separation its our quest to return to normal before we were press ganged into this bloody cursed marriage with the english yes our ancestors were dragged kicking and bloody well screaming into this mess and we are being told we are like nazies how bloody well dare they link us to those people.
Just a thought mind how you go now ha ha need to go and clam down after that rant ha ha

My family are all over the place. I have relatives who settled in Reading/England had four kids who think of themselves as English. I have an uncle to stayed in Germany after leaving the army. I have relatives in Australia and Canada. My cousins eldest married a Spanish woman. I am in a relationship with a woman from New Zealand and I have friends as far afield as the USA. I do not consider myself to be unique, I am sure we all have similar stories. I do not and never will think of them as foreign. When I read this bile from Brown, I am filled with a revulsion for this concept of Union that seems to be rooted in fear of the foreign. An odd message that says I must sever all contact with those I love, as they would be foreign, but….many of them already are but frankly they are still family and friends. Their nationality doesn’t come into it.

Anyone who would distance themselves or cut themselves off if someone they knew left for foreign climes, is frankly in my book, a moron.

As for the rest. Frankly if the union was worth a damn we’d be having a tough time of it. But their decision to make all of us who wish to end Westminster’s control of Scotland into bitter enemies, both frightens and saddens me. There are sadly too many of them, so blind that they cannot see. They are tearing into the very roots of union and destroying it themselves. Having so casually spat pure poison and venom in our faces, how can they ever move on from there. They do this I think, mainly because they have no argument to make for the Union, and so turned this is a personal vendetta against Salmond and the SNP. This is still ongoing, but as they fail to make inroads, they have turned their hatred against their own fellow Scots. No one in the yes camp wanted this, but the No camp has increasingly taken a tone that spits hatred in your face, while waving a union jack at you, then screams about national unity.

The very idea of “national unity”, the union, Britishness, and crowning it all…Westminster, makes me feel sick. One look at the papers and we see Esther McVey talking of the need to redefine “working until you drop” to be something positive, as they talk of extending the benefits of workfare to the over 50s and pensioners. Osborne wants to sack another million public sector workers by 2019. The Con-dems are now putting forward proposals to abolish national insurance and fold that money into a super income tax. Nothing ring-fenced or protected. From pensions to the NHS – with such a proposal put into effect the end of universalism, NHS cradle to the grave and so much more can be throttled with Thatcherite efficiency to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy. Labour are not much better – they are proposing to implement and maintain every insane and reckless policy put forward by this government. They also wish to remove welfare support for the disabled if they have not paid 5 years NI contributions. Meaning that anyone born with a disability will be be left with nothing. Workfare is to be extended to the young with their “workfare with a sandwich” scheme. There are suspicious rumblings that they have no intention of abolishing bed room tax, they certainly aren’t talking about removing ATOS from its position to abuse our most vulnerable for profit. As every single thing that defines the UK is dismantled, the argument for Union falls to pieces and all that’s left is the symbolism. Labour has been so demented in its attempts to triangulate a right wing vote, that its simply been captured by it. Its losing ground to the con-dems by actually making Cameron and Osborne look like moderates.

The UK is going down a deep, dark and scary hole. I see no reason for Scotland to tag along for the ride.

I am not sure of how the vote will go at the moment, but the one prediction I can make, that the Union is not going survive regardless of how the vote falls. The true achievement of the No campaign is to ensure that those who vote no are going to detest their own countrymen for having voted yes. Independent or no, the Union is finished.

I couldn’t bring myself to read the article being discussed. The headline was enough. I find these tunnel vision folk not only difficult to understand but thoroughly depressing to consider. I have one unionist friend who simply cannot accept that we Scots are capable of running our own affairs. No amount of reasoned argument can shake this determined belief. It’s like conditioning from childhood. But there’s still two and a half months……..I may yet successfully break through!

nicely put. Many have gone through that with their parents. And they all done bloody well for themselves. Good on you mate.

My mother bent over backwards to support me joinig up as a 16 year old. later in my 20’s she said she worried like hell until she saw me grow . I saw the world a million miles away from the usual holiday haunts and i saw the whole world and it’s mixture of people whilst most never left Scotland. An education equal to any .

Tom is a defunct old man who cannot see too far forward because the best of his days are behind him. We have MANY old soldiers like that. To put him in the paper to spout more fear and scares is desperation on BT part. And the record better start looking at it’s comments pages because NO-ONE believes the scares anymore. And they are getting louder every passing day.

Drivel wiped from an old fogey’s slavering chin.

We are looking forward. And your spot on Derek that this country has fought battles with Westminster before (poll tax and pits) Any respect he had went out the window with that piece. Although i do believe you know the man better and will leave my comments at that.

Good stuff again Derek Stirring stuff.

If we only had your voice and words going national …..

Sept 19th should be a good day to weigh up your options in a SBC or an independent affairs show. There will be a few vacancies open i’m sure

Amongst some there is deep annoyance that the referendum has wakened a sleeping, apathetic, disgruntled electorate and got them talking to one another. About politics, for heaven’s sake! About making life better for people. About treating people with dignity and respect. About improving our system of governance. About dragging Scotland into the twenty first century and utilising our natural resources for the benefit of all.

Somehow, some people think this is an appalling turn for the worse. They would rather apathy increased until all that was left was a hollow democratic skeleton, and that we all went back to sleep again and let the big boys play at cowboys and indians.

Don’t know the journalist concerned, but perhaps he’d be happier weeding his garden.

There is this mythical stick, a strong heavy club of a thing. It has a solid thick shaft and bulbous end covered in dragons teeth that wouldn’t look out of place in some medieval-set epic. This is the stick that Scotland, and Scots, gets beaten down with time and time again wielded by Scottish Labour unionists be it politicians or their apparatchik followers.

Scribed on the side of this monstrous creation is the legend ‘Scotland shall not aspire’. You see at the heart of Scottish Labour is communism, that is almost forgotten now, hidden away like some untrendy embarrassment, but the stick was forged out of communism at its most accepted time. When the Labour movement began it had men who had vision of a better world where all and sundry would be treated as equals as the wealth of the land would be shared among the communities and out of that would become a new enlightenment and Home Rule.

But as these men grew old and died the communists stood up from the shadows and took over. Slowly but surely they talked in a similar way to their predecessors but their actions were very different. Scotland in terms of country, language and culture would be trampled upon and banished, the people would need to look elsewhere for historical enlightenment because you won’t find in the schools any more. Home Rule was cast away as we were told that we are now North Britons. Hence forth a new proclimation shall have North Briton as a region formally known as Scotland.

There was dissent among the ordinary, people didn’t feel North British, they felt Scottish. So the big stick was created ‘Scotland shall not aspire’ and any of those who would present themselves as ‘Scottish’ or recognise that ‘Scottishness’ has a play in their lives will be tarred as ‘cringeworthy’ and those who suffer as such will be purified by the big stick and never again would Scottishness infect your mind.

Many signed up or the purification, they saw it as being honest and progressive because they were told it was so. ‘No more Scotland for me’ was the cry, hello ‘internationalism’ was the new buzzword. It had to be so because looking to Scotland and have Scottish people solve Scottish problems with Scottish solutions would mean you would be infected with the cringe virus and it will be the big stick for you my boy. Anyway a good beating never did anybody any harm, look at Brian Wilson, he one time of the cringe until he saw the light and was purified to become a leading North Brit.

But the stick never purified 100 per cent of Scotland. It never fully worked. People started to question the validity of the stick because they didn’t feel Scotland and Scottishness was cringeworthy at all. They thought feeling Scottish was normal and the big stick was not normal. This angered the communists in Scottish Labour, to such an extent that the 1979 referendum was rigged by them. Being communists they don’t believe in democracy, they believe in One Nation, which also means one party. They want to rule forever and in North Briton they thought they did. But all empires come to an end, some last 300 years, some for only 13.

But the old North Brits have been reheated to fight a new war, a new referendum against new rules and a new younger opposition. And with them comes their old big stick ‘Scotland shall not aspire’, the message is old, the stick not as menacing or strong as it was once and nobody wants to be a North Briton anymore. They can still bark and some will still applaud, but like the newspapers that support them, they are fading away into dust.

Curiously, one thing has changed though, the communists formerly called North Brits now see themselves ‘proud Scots’, funny that. But like most myths you have to believe in it to have real effect, does anyone fear the big stick anymore?

On 19th September 2014, Scotland can wake up pull the curtains back and see the sun shining once again. An opportunity for all to create good things, a new country, a new society, a new history from a new future and a new constitution, now that I believe is something worth waking up to.

Presumably the other grandparents of Tom Brown’s family are able to conduct normal family life while being under the jurisdiction of a different government than their grandchildren live in but Tom Brown seems to think he will not be able to cope – the problem is his not ours.

Yes I did read it Derek and was disappointed on so many levels. From Mr Brown’s dismissal of Nats and narrow nationalism to his fairly overt attempt to induce fear over folks becoming furren.

Yeah, he said that in the same article. He didn’t want certain family members not resident in Scotland become or be considered foreign, yet accused those who would vote for political independence as narrow nationalists. He has no intention of engaging with YES Scotland or the concept of civic nationalism. He’s of his time and mindset. Its his honestly held opinion of course, but it strikes me as a particularly closed and intransigent mindset. The fact that he either cannot or will not accept the failure of Westminster systems of politics is beyond me. The evidence of this failure of both the system and the parties which support it is mountainous.

If the system of government won’t change for you. You change the system of government you use.

Scotland is a country and it deserves and has a right to its own government.

If anybody in the media declares there is not enough information out there they should be immediately sacked. That is their job. I realised while cycling around Ireland in the 1980’s that Irish soldiers who had fought for Britain had their pensions paid into the Irish post office. I think there were some post offices that had a special counter for British pensioners. To suggest that Scottish people would not get the same pension rights as applied in Southern Ireland was a despicable slur on the present government. But has anyone in the media said this. The present government was criminally happy with this state of affairs as were the LIb Dems and the Labour party. It took an official from the D W P to clear up this matter over a year into the debate. He said that peoples pensions would not be affected by the outcome of the referendum. Except that they may increase in an Independent Scotland. This is an issue that should have been cleared up last September by the government and our so called free press.

Isin’t it ironic that Tom Brown failed to recognise the biggest glaring omission from the whole “I don’t want my grandchildren to be foreigners”. Lets ignore the man xenophobia for his own kin but why his own children left Scotland. People migrate all over the world for the hope of a better life now if there is no difference within the UK they would not have needed to relocate.

Its striking that people like Jim Sillars wants his grandchildren to be close and therefore advocates independence to create a better future and the likes of Brown negates to critique the modern day UK state and its failings.

I suppose opening the cage door and wheeling out an old moth-eaten bear to roar at unseen things is a tactic, but it’s a rather sad one. I feel sorry for the old moth-eaten bear. He’d rather stay in his dirty old pen and be comfortable with what he knows, than be reinvigorated by the prospect of escaping.

Very sad to see the myth of “hissing ,spitting nationalists” repeated here.
They told the same lie at the double Paisley by election and the Monklands by election.
I was at them all and there were absolutely no hissing, spitting nationalists anywhere to be seen.

I dread to think what kind of country we will be left with if we don’t get independence, the Tories will have to team up with UKip as the liberal democrats have no chance of being elected next year, we will be literally beaten into the ground by the next government. I can’t get my head round the fact that their are Scots out there who don’t have the courage to say Yes we can govern ourselves, we are as smart if not smarter than any other nation in the world, certainly smarter than the English parliament, and that is what it is, in fact it is the London parliament, because they don’t really look after the interests of anyone else, outside London. I passionately believe our ancestors will turn in their graves if we get a no vote, even worse, if Scots don’t turn out to vote, so let’s put our power in the pen and get out and vote Yes,

Guess long shanks of years gone by was correct when he made the statement Brits would breed Scots out, hope all those who voted no change their names to campbell traitors I’m sure all those ancestors of yours who gave their life for freedom turn over in their graves,you had a chance for freedom but Brits are still lying and scaring the hell out you.I’m not from Scotland but my ancestors were they went to america to get away from Brits and thankfully fought in the revolutionary to be rid of Brits in america.sorry you didn’t love your country enough to vote yes.feel sorry for you.